Getting Ireland moving

Sir, – The debate on these pages provoked by the essay by John Collison on the state of the nation (“Ireland is going backwards. Here’s how to get it moving,” Weekend, October 25th) is limited by its focus on solutions within the existing economic model. The reason for non-government organisations (NGOs) and such bodies was not based on politicians seeking ways to deflect responsibility and accountability but on the Margaret Thatcher/ Ronald Reagan approach aimed at reducing the size of government.

In efforts to keep public sector numbers down and the pay bill at a minimum, functions were devolved outside the Civil Service. Certain areas were privatised. As a result, for many years while the economy and population grew, the number of civil servants remained around the 30,000 mark until about 10 years ago, while the number of NGOs grew enormously.

This is just an example of the thinking that has brought us to the current impasse. The government parties inherited this economic approach from their predecessors in the 1980s and 1990s and seem incapable of seeing anything outside of the neoliberal economic model. Indeed, given that many of them grew up and were educated under this system it is not surprising that they see any alternatives as illogical or mad.

As some of your contributors have noted, the risk in not identifying and changing the economic thinking that has brought us to where we are now is that we might look for the “strong person” who will force things through, while leaving, of course, the existing system by which it would appear the rich are getting richer unscathed. In other words, a right-wing autocracy.

Mr Collison is right.